Time to make airport security swifter, smarter, safer in Canada

October 31, 2016

If policy makers moved in this direction we could have a security screening system that works not just for a select few, but for everybody as it does in the U.S. Trusted travellers would no longer have to take off their belt or shoes or remove their laptops from their bags.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau has been on the job for almost a year, but has yet to deliver any meaningful results on this file, writes Sen. Colin Kenny. The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright

PARLIAMENT HILL—If you’ve flown anywhere in Canada recently, there’s a good chance you’ve had to deal with the headache of longer than normal wait times at security screening. You also wouldn’t be wrong in thinking wait times are getting worse. Since 2013, the length of screening times has deteriorated so badly that in their submission to the 2015 Transportation Act Review, the Canadian Airport Council referred to security screening services as a being in a state of “crisis.”

Unless Trudeau plans to be out on these streets, fighting against police brutality or in cabinet drafting legislation to curb police powers, his, and all the other white voices of his ilk, have no merit here.

'I do agree that things need to be implemented as quickly as possible. We could've done this a lot sooner. The good news is that we’re doing it now and announcing it today,' says Transport Minister Marc Garneau.